An Account of an Incident in the Life of Chuckles the Clown, as Told by the Above
Funny, isn't it? A whole land full of ponies who spend almost every waking minute of every day laughing and smiling, and there are some ponies who think that their contribution to life should be to try and make them laugh and smile even more. By which I mean me. Hey, I'm kinda dumb. I'm a clown, in case you couldn't tell. Yeah, that's what all this make up's about. I don't go around with a huge painted grin plastered across my face for my health, y'know.
Weird thing is, most ponies don't even find clowns that funny. They ask me what I do for a living, and I tell them, and they either look incredibly sympathetic or act like I'm about to stab them. Hey, that's what clowns do, right? Right. Huh. Surprising though it may seem, I prefer the sympathy. At least there's some justification to feeling sorry for me. You think clowns are actually happy? I guess we are for the first week or so. Then we get miserable, then turn cynical fast.
The worst part is how anti-clown the world can be. Don't know what I mean? Go to the nearest purveyor of cheap paperbacks and penny shockers, go to the horror section, and count the ones that feature clowns in some way. Okay, don't actually do that, it would be needlessly time-consuming, but you get what I'm saying. It might not seem much, but it gets to you. Imagine if you were a baker and every third horror story were about how bakers are all psychos who want to chop you up and turn you into... I dunno, muffins or something.
I'm currently with the Circus Celestius - no affiliation with the princess, you understand. All the posters say some ponyfeathers about us being "The Greatest Circus in All of Equestria!" Funny. This is my third circus, and the last two said exactly the same thing on their posters. I was their only common element. By a simple process of logical reasoning, I guess that makes me the greatest circus act ever.
I call it an act, but clowns just sort of fill in between the proper acts. The programme usually says something like
The Astonishing Trapezo, Master of the Flying Trapeze!
Clowns
Honeysuckle the Bearded Yodelmare!
Okay, the acts normally have better names than that. But not much better. And we're always just 'clowns'. We don't get a name for our troup of tomfoolery, just 'clowns'. Of course, I have an individual name in the script. I'm Clown Three. Obviously. I dunno if I outrank Clown Four, or what.
And then we get out there, and do our stuff -- the funny walks, the buckets of water that are just glitter, the slipping on a banana skin. Do you know how hard it is to slip on a banana skin and make it look good? Takes years of practice. I have the scars to prove it. And the audience laughs away. There's no sympathy then, when we really need it. Some of them are laughing at us, enjoying our enforced suffering. Assholes. Most of them, I think, are laughing out of pure nervousness, and I get it. Believe me, I do. It's creepy, watching a bunch of grown stallions, with hideous caricatures for faces, cavorting like foals.
So why do I carry on? I... there's just stuff... lemme give you an example. It was back a few years ago, when we were perfoming in Cloudsdale. They'd set up a special big top and circus ring on top of the clouds so we could all walk around properly, in case we couldn't fly or cast spells. There's another thing, you never see any unicorn clowns. Like, none. Zero. And now I come to think of it, I think I've only ever known one pegasus clown. No, two. But still. The rest of us are all earth ponies. That's pretty weird. I mean, obviously you don't see any pegasus trapeze artists, or unicorn jugglers. That would just make it too easy. But clowns? Like I say, weird. Maybe we're just the only ponies with the required absence of self-respect.
Hey, I'm drifting again. Anyway, this was with a different, smaller circus, and I was the only clown. Yeah, that was fun. Solo clowing. That's 90% of classic clownery out of the window, right there. So I'd just be stuck out there in the middle of the sawdust and sweat and grease doing the old "My hoof's a candle" routine. And then I'd slip on a banana skin, with hilarious consequences. And I'd lie there on my rump and cast a long, plaintive look up at the crowd (it was in the script, but it was from the heart, too), and they'd just laugh all the harder. Assholes. Not my favourite routine.
I think we were on maybe our third or fourth night, doesn't matter, and I was sat in my dressing room. The show hadn't quite finished yet, and all the others were going out for their final bow. I was originally going to be with them, but - wait for it - the powers that be couldn't think of another joke for me to do. Seriously. I didn't get to bow because they couldn't think of a way I could make it look funny. Of course, I could have given them half a dozen suggestions, but they didn't ask, and honestly, I didn't mind. The less time out there in front of those sniggering morons, the better.
Anyway, I guess you could say this was the all-time low of my career, and if you don't know why, just go back and read the last couple paragraphs, more slowly this time, while actually paying attention. All done? Good. Sheesh. I was thinking of just packing it all in. I had a cousin in Appleloosa, I could have gone stayed with him, done a bit of farm labor, maybe, and I stress the maybe, done a bit of rodeo clowning once in a while.
By this time I could hear the audience applauding its collective tails off, so I knew the show was over. I sat there for maybe a mintue, head in hooves, picturing those smug jerks bowing over and over, and wishing I were with them. No, being glad I wasn't with them. No, wishing I were glad I wasn't with them. That was it. So I was up to my metaphorical neck in self-pity, when all of a sudden there was this quiet little cough. Really quiet. I've never heard anypony make a cough sound so much like a squeak.
I looked round, and there was this tiny little filly standing behind me. Yellow coat, pink mane, blue eyes. Kinda spindly. Too young for a cutie-mark. She shouldn't really have been in there, but I wasn't really in the mood to throw somepony out. So I just said "Hi."
"Hi," she said. Ah. I'd never heard anypony make the word 'hi' sound so much like a squeak, either. Clearly this little pony had a theme going. "What's your name, little filly?"
"F- F-" She was struggling, so I tried to make it easy for her.
"Hey, it's okay. You lost?"
But, all credit to her, she kept on trying. Eventually she managed to squeak out "Fluttershy." Now, I've always been proud of my hearing, but I barely caught that. But I did catch it. Barely, though.
"Hey there, Fluttershy. I'm Chuckles." Not a name I'm proud of, and it does make me sound like someone out of a breezie-story, but it gets me through life. "Are your parents about?"
She nodded, which seemed to be easier for her than speaking. Fair enough.
"Do they know where you are?" I had my reputation to think of, you understand. If a couple of irate parents accuse a semi-itinerant clown of abducting a little filly, whose side do you think the law's gonna come down on? Right first time.
She nodded again, and make a squeak of acknowledgement. I sighed. I couldn't see this conversation developing very fast. I decided I'd try and move things on.
"Are you looking for a performer?" I asked. Obviously she was, what else would she be doing back here? Pointless question, but it was on the spur of the moment, and all that. She nodded again. I wasn't making much progress. "Who?" I asked. She flinched. Oops. Must have sounded a bit more exasperated than I meant to. So I got up and sat down on the floor next to her. Not too close, y'know, just so it was a proper conversation.
She was staring up at me with those big eyes, all timid and round (the eyes, not her), and it occurred to me that she'd probably come to see me. It might seem obvious to you, but it's not like it had happened before. Ponies would come back stage to see the other acts, mind; the lady gymnasts usually had a huge queue outside. But not me. Like I say, standard circus-fare, that's us. They'd miss us if we were gone, but as long as we're there, they're indifferent. We're background noise to them. Sorry, losing focus. Anyhow...
So I said something like "Is it me you're looking for?" and she nodded, and this time she even said "Uh-huh." We were making breakthrough after breakthrough.
"Why?" I asked. Being direct was a risk with this filly, but time doesn't grow on trees. No, I've no idea what that means, either.
"I- uh- you..."
"Don't be shy, Flutter- oh..." Yeah, this was basically what she was all about, wasn't it? I should probably have picked up on that.
"You- you're my favourite part of the show." She could, as I'd suspected for some time, speak in full sentences. That was enough to make me break into a broad grin - a real one for once.
"Aw, that's nice of you, Fluttershy! Real nice."
"That's okay..." She was kind of shrinking back into her shell. I dunno why, but I just didn't want that to happen.
So I said "And why's that?"
That did the trick. She did an admiring face, which was nice, and came out all at once with "Oh, I just think it's so amazing, what you do, going out there every night in front of all those ponies, and, um, they laugh at you and that must hurt sometimes but you keep going on and on, and I could never do anything like that, and it's wonderful that you can." Bit much to take in, but I was always susceptible to flattery. She looked kind of exhausted after all that, as well. I suppose extended speaking wasn't one of her major hobbies. "How did you become a clown?" she asked innocently.
Hoo boy. There's a question. Now, the real reason is that being the youngest in my family, and all, I was always trying to get attention, and the only way I seemed to be able to do that was making ponies laugh. That was never a problem back then. Making ponies laugh is fun, really. Knowing that you're worth something, that they like you, that your time isn't being wasted. Pretty much the exact opposite of being a clown, really. Just wish I'd known that at the time. But I didn't have to go into details, as it turned out.
"When I grow up, I want to be just like you," she whispered.
"Um... a clown?"
She almost laughed, but it just came out as - you guessed it - a squeak. "No, I just mean... well, I sometimes wish I weren't so shy, and I'd like to be a bit more... um..."
"Confident?"
"Yeah..."
"You know, Fluttershy, maybe you will be." She looked up at me, hopefully. "And maybe you won't," I continued. Harsh, but I was going somewhere with this. "But not everypony is an exhibitionist, like me. Everypony interacts with everypony else in a different way. The important thing is that you be yourself. It's up to you to find out whether that means somepony who's shy, or somepony who's confident, or somepony who's a bit of both. If you are confident, then that's great. But if not, you shouldn't be any less proud of who you are, because whoever you are, you'll still be special."
No idea where any of that came from. No idea. But Fluttershy's face glowed. She smiled properly. "I... I feel more confident already," she informed me in a voice that might even have been loud enough to be heard more than six hooves away.
"That's good."
She seemed to notice something out of the corner of her eye, and blushed. Turning, I saw two adult ponies peeking in through the door. They were clearly her parents. I could see that just from the looks of pride on their faces. Catching my eye, Fluttershy's mother mouthed 'Thank you', and her father smiled gratefully. I was going to smile sheepishly back at them, but I still had the make-up on, so I decided to save myself the bother. But underneath all that make-up, I was blushing redder than my own nose. Not the real one, though. You know what I mean.
So, yeah. Stuff like that. That's why I'm still a clown. That and the dental plan. It's a miserable job, but somepony's got to do it.
Author's Note
As 'sad' and 'comedy' are apparently conflicting categories, I settled for neither. Shame there's no 'poignant' tag. I think I may have earned it.
